The Future of the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule
On January 2, 2011, EPA’s much-anticipated prevention of significant deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule took effect, expanding the reach of the Clean Air Act and creating a phased-in approach to greenhouse gas regulation that initially targets the nation’s largest emitters but will gradually encompass additional sources. Numerous challenges threaten the rule’s long-term viability, including a regulatory alternative that could gain traction in the continued absence of a legislative response to the issue of climate change.
Place-Based National Forest Legislation and Agreements: Common Characteristics and Policy Recommendations
Throughout the country, divergent interests are collaborating about how they would like particular national forests to be managed. Some of these initiatives are seeking place-based legislation as a way to secure such agreements, while others use an assortment of different approaches and memoranda of understanding. What is most remarkable about these initiatives is the similarities they share, from a widespread frustration with the status quo to the search for more certainty in forest management.
The Clean Water Act Returns (Again): Part I, TMDLs and the Chesapeake Bay
The CWA, with multiple paths to its destination, is reinventing itself once more. Enacted in modern for in 1972, the next quarter century saw EPA focused on the development of technology standards for industrial and municipal point sources. In the mid-1990s, prodded forward by a stream of citizen suits, the Agency started to address nonpoint sources of pollution through water quality standards and the TMDL program. This movement stalled from 2000-2009, and the current revival raises the question whether EPA, at last, can make nonpoint and ambient-based controls effective.
The Outer Limits of Endangered Species Act Liability—The ESA’s Indirect Effect Regulation and Its Application to Climate Change
Good scientists have active minds and creative imaginations. These traits allow scientists to develop hypotheses and design experiments to test them with the hope of moving scientific inquiry and the state of knowledge ever further. While most laws do not implicate or emphasize science, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is among the few that does.
NEPA and Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The growing national focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is creating new challenges for the application of one of the most venerable federal environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of their proposed actions in formal environmental studies. The purpose of the law is to generate better information on environmental impacts for agency decisionmakers and the public, so that agencies can make better decisions.
Environmental Law Goes Global: Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental Cases That Changed the World, by Oliver A. Houck
The author reviews Oliver Houck’s inspirational book, Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental Cases That Changed the World. In this book, Houck tells the stories of courageous citizens in eight countries who took legal action to defend the environment.